


Taxonomy

by greywash



Series: The Good Morrow [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Airports, Character Study, Desire, Experimental Fiction, Imported from Tumblr, Love, M/M, POV Second Person, See Author's Notes For Warnings, Stream of Consciousness, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Bathed in yellow-hazed sweat-tinged chemical airport light: clawing into the back of your throat, the membranes of your eyes.





	Taxonomy

**Author's Note:**

> So, first, a note: this and its companion piece, "[Mass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885599/)," were originally posted to Tumblr ("Mass" on 21 November 2014, this one on 10 May 2015); while I normally don't like to post draft/first pass fiction to AO3— _especially_ for a universe that is as high-stakes to me as this one—I can't quite reconcile reposting them as "drafts" to DW, four years later, either. So: if, in my mega-edit yet to come on the remaining sections of _The Good Morrow_ , I make substantive edits to either of these works: **I will post the revisions as new, related works** , rather than editing these works directly. 
> 
> I am also replicating my Tumblr post meta content below, though, yes, I am aware that it does look a bit silly on the AO3.
> 
> This, like all of the works in this universe set chronologically after... uh, let's say late-October 2012, requires **blanket warnings for consent issues and disturbing content**. My full warnings policy is in my [profile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings), and as always, if you have specific content concerns, you are always welcome and encouraged to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com). 
> 
> _\- Gins 2018.12.06 13:41 PST_
> 
> * * *
> 
> ~ ~ no sunday six this week because finals oh waaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiit ~ ~ 
> 
> This is a direct companion piece to [“Mass”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885599/), though it takes place six months later; like “Mass”, it’s (sort of) experimental, it’s (very) unbeta'ed, and it’ll make a lot more sense after the other stories in this arc are posted, all of which is why I’m just posting it to Tumblr for now and waiting to archive it to AO3 until the rest of the arc is done. Unlike “Mass”, this happens _after_ my sort of warnings-related line in the sand on this arc becomes necessary, so I am including my **blanket warnings for consent issues and disturbing content**. As always, [I do not use Tumblr-typical content or trigger warnings on fiction posts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings).

**Monday, 22 April 2013, 10:46 CEST**  
**Charles de Gaulle International Airport**  
**Gate M26**

 

—whenever you two started to have the sort of lives where well-brought-up lads like him got into sneaking concealed weapons past airport security to read (listlessly at least) _The Casual Vacancy_ in a zipped-up jacket crammed onto a waiting lounge seat between a hollow-eyed exhausted mother sweating into her tracksuit with a toddler on her lap and an awkward angular man in a purple shirt and twice-pressed wool trousers, missing (at least [for the moment]) his coat.

His head bent down. His long eyelashes: absurd. Whenever you two started to have the sort of lives where. His nostrils flare; you don't know why. You haven't read it. Ten minutes to eleven in the morning with one hundred and twenty-six people currently crammed into a waiting area comfortably big enough for eighty-nine.

"Last year," you say, "Charles de Gaulle was ranked the worst airport in the world."

"Hm." He closes his thumb in the book, looking up and over, up up up. Above you the curved ribs of the ceiling too low to be anything but claustrophobic as you look up up up and he says, "At least our flight isn't delayed— _oh wait_ ," and even though you aren't startled you sound it, when you laugh.

Up up up.

You two started to have lives where behind you an elderly couple is talking loudly in Japanese. The terminal overheated all over flushed and red. _No don't run I've told you not to run_ says the mother at his right with one arm reaching out and the other around the little girl sucking on a fist as standing the father catches the little boy by the hood of the blue jacket as the baby in the carrier screams and screams into its father's chest. A group of American students shouting in English a girl squealing at a tight-sudden arm round the waist a half-dozen delayed corporate sorts thumbing angrily at BlackBerrys while a waifish young man in huge sunglasses nods to his iPhone noise everywhere in the too-bright artificial light: could be drunk, could be hungover, could be ill, you think; but you aren't.

Closer to you, and soft, he says, "Not a long flight, though, no?" and no, not long. The sort of lives where he keeps his feet tucked under his red uncomfortable seat and unbearable you stick out your legs into the aisle amid everyone else's baggage with the sides of you pressed overtight together: "No," you say, "not long."

"Well, then," he murmurs, "not long," and doesn't touch you as you close your eyes.

The tannoy chimes and echoes: impossible to hear. The sort of lives where everyone sweating in this overwarm overfull room designed whenever possible to forbid the admission of so much as a scrap of outside's wet wide-open air. You smell bodies. Sweat and breath and dirty hair. Squirming inside you twisting turns your organs inside out. You want something else, almost; but your pockets are empty, and you don't smoke anymore, besides.

"It's hard to know if," you say; "when we were in New York," you say; "really, what with Heathrow," you say, "being" your thick tongue numb lips "the way that it is, and."

After some moments, "We would've had time after all," he says. "Ought to've—could've had a proper breakfast, could've—could've _stayed_ , you could've—."

He stops. Knows that ribs aching you'll fill in all his gaps, and leaning, a very little, he sighs.

"Yeah," you say, "well. Here we are."

Here you two are having the sort of lives where in an airport he curls the backs of his knuckles against the side of the pressed-twice trousers and still struggling but tethered by the blue jacket the little boy sits down hard on the floor, and begins to cry. Bathed in yellow-hazed sweat-tinged chemical airport light: clawing (you shiver absurdly) into the back of your throat, the membranes of your eyes. With his hands only just against you can't see anything and you stand, "I need," your moving hands, and the gaps of the universe not big enough to fit. You shoulder your way through towards the high toilet signs, to echoing tile where you turn on the taps, noise digging in pressing into you pressing you down like dough washing papier-mâché hands and clay face shivering bright-light-bright-light to wishing far-away for a toothbrush—any toothbrush—for, for, for (at last) the blue-handled toothbrush in the bag by his knees. When you are back mostly fitting all into one place into the twice-pressed trousers into the wilting purple shirt with a dozen other men moving everywhere all around and you look up at the damp-fringed man in the mirror, he is unfamiliar, unrecognized, but if he stripped bare would you know him? small—fading—but could you find any yellow-greenpurple familiar topographies known past the wet cuffs of his shirt and his bony white wrists? Crawling all over crammed in here all alone and you can't breathe out there but you can't any better in here so back you go, swim into oceans of bodies, the airport's sweating seas, with nothing around you but your thin shirt and wrinkled trousers because it was forecast to be warm, so your coat is packed up tidily into your checked bag, folded in half, into quarters, with the paper from the dry cleaners still tucked in between.

Coming back towards your seats: he is turned. The sort of lives where hesitant, still, you think, after nearly two months in France: he speaks clumsily, half-smiling and bashful, still, to the mother and the toddler who removes the spit-wet hand and waves, so that he laughs awkwardly, but waves back. How long, you wonder? He is still waiting for you, still, you think; but the bags are rearranged, how long? Now there are two paper cups and a little paper bag on your seat. How long, that he looks at you all over when you come back?

You have come back so he has turned: the young mother forgotten: a small, vicious thrill. He takes one cup and passes you the other, the bag. "Croissants," he says. (Between the phone call from and the press of his or well between one thing and another [it's not as though you don't know that] you didn't eat dinner but you slept [so, that], at least, at last, under the blue duvet [it isn't as though you didn't] you slept.) "Thought that we ought to," he says, too fast, apologetic, "while at least it's not—," but he stops when you nod; and he watches without moving as thick-throated but diligent you tear a fresh croissant to bite-size quartered pieces as you eat. You eat and eat. You chew and you swallow and you chew and you swallow as you eat. "They're both for you," he says, when you have to work your throat twice to get the last of it down and pass back the bag; you very nearly want to, because; but shake your head, because, in all honesty, you can't.

"All right," he says, and takes it, folds it up. Into his laptop bag, hidden so that your stomach unclenches as close by he murmurs, "All right."

His blue, blue eyes. Your sort of lives: flustered you sip from your cup, washing down—and it's sweet, far sweeter than—and creamy, very much so, and you tilt the cup until you can get a proper undeniable look at the logo on the side.

Up. Up up you look up at the tightening ribs of your claustrophobic indoor sky.

"How long was I," you ask, finally; and John clears his throat.

"Long enough," he says, shrugging. _To need to charm a stranger in French to save our seats_ , he doesn't say, or _to make two stops with both our bags hanging off my arms_. He doesn't say, _long enough for me to get you both a croissant you'd be willing eat and your favorite Starbucks drink_ , or anything like; but you feel it. You feel it all over, underneath your clothes. Your unfamiliar-familiar skin. You feel like he's shoved you down onto the floor and held you there 'til your voice not-quite ran out, sobbing. You feel (— _breathless_ )—you feel like he's left you black and blue, bruised nearly all the way down to your suddenly-solid bones.

Almost, if not quite.

You sip your drink. "Thank you," you almost say. (Almost.) Almost too quiet to be heard, but not quite.

He snorts. "Oh, but you won't anymore," he says, looking over, and up, up, up: his wide warm blue eyes. The tannoy announces a flight boarding, not (of course) yours. The sort of lives where if when you say "No?" your voice is rough, he's kind enough not to mention it; blue soft at the edges and smiling, when he replies, "It's decaf."

Past your clothes are his clothes and inside them is him. When you let out the windings in your joints and your spine, you sink 'til he stops you, won't you; so you do. (Warm. In the sweating chemical light.)

"You're right," you say. "I don't, anymore. That's done the trick."

His mouth quirks. Above: his oceans of eyes. He turns back face-forward, and hooks his left shoe back and around, resting it in between your feet.


End file.
